How do we make decisions as consumers? What do we pay attention to, and how do our initial responses predict our final choices? To what extent are these processes unconscious and cannot be reflected in overt reports? This course will provide you with an introduction to some of the most basic methods in the emerging fields of consumer neuroscience and neuromarketing. You will learn about the methods employed and what they mean. You will learn about the basic brain mechanisms in consumer choice, and how to stay updated on these topics. The course will give an overview of the current and future uses of neuroscience in business.

From the lesson

Sensory Neuromarketing

In this module we will have contents filled on the topic of sensory neuromarketing. How are our senses affected differently as consumers? What can you do to organise your communications to better use all the senses? How does the brain actually use the senses? What tools do we have for assessing the use of senses, and how they affect consumers?

Meet the Instructors

Thomas Zoëga Ramsøy

PhD in Neurobiology, Certified Neuropsychologist & Assistant Professor in Marketing & NeuroscienceHead of the Center for Decision Neuroscience, Department of Marketing at Copenhagen Business School, and Head of Danish Research Centre for Magnetic Resonance at Copenhagen University Hospital Hvidovre

Okay, so for Week 3, we will walk through two different studies and one new method.

This is the Week 3 that is about sensory neuromarketing.

So basically, how we can study how different senses are being loaded and

used in marketing and branding efforts, and how that can affect consumer behavior.

We will talk about first the Morrin and Ratneshwar study that is entitled,

does it make sense to use scents to enhance brand memory?

And then we will walk through one of my own studies that is looking at the effect

of predictable and unpredictable tones on first impressions for brands.

And then we will focus on one single method that is the sensory load chart

,which is a method to explore how people are experiencing brands and products.

In this set of our Morrin and Ratneshwar, they wanted to basically study if

particular scents have an impact on branding and brand memory.

If you can imagine that in stores and

store environments, and even in packages, there might be some added scents.

And the question is,

does that scent have an effect on consumer preference and consumer memory?

And the other thing is also if whether that scent needs to be specific.

So not only does the scent need to be present and

pleasant, but does it also need to be relevant for that particular product?

Ratneshwar and the Morrin conducted several studies in which they

looked at both the time at which the scent was presented but

also whether the scent was relevant or congruent with the product type.

What they found was basically two things.

First of all, having a sense, in general, as you can see here on the top chart,

had a lot of impact on people's viewing time.

So by measuring where people were looking,

whether they looked at particular brands, people tended to look much

more towards the brands when there was a congruent scent and in incongruent scent.

But as long as there was a scent present,

there was much more viewing towards the brand.

There was no difference between whether the a scent had to be congruent or not.

So what this shows is that people tend to attend

the brands more when there was a scent present

in exploring people's brand recall.

So whether people remembered the brand,

there was tentatively an effect of scent on people's brand recall.

But again, there was no particular effect of whether that scent had to be

relevant or congruent with the actual product.

So together, this suggests that in the study by Morrin and Ratneshwar, so just

that, yes, there is an effect of scents on brand memory and brand attention.

But no, there is no reason to say that you'd need a particular scent.

As long as it's pleasant, it doesn't need to be more specific on that.

In a new study by myself and my colleagues, Morten Friis-Olivarius,

Catrine Jacobsen, and Simon Jensen, and Martin Skov.

We studied whether people would be affected by contextual

information on their first impressions towards brands.

Prior research have demonstrated that if you are exposed to unpredictable sounds,

for example, that tends to trigger an activation of the brain's amygdala.

Which is connected to other things, such as fear and stress, but

also positive emotions.

But in general,

we see that stronger emotional responses in the amygdala are stronger.

Responses in the amygdala are related to negative behavior or

negative emotions, and tentatively, avoidance behavior.

So what we wanted to test is whether people's first impression of

brand logos could be affected by seemingly irrelevant but still present attempts.